The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1): 4 Stars

Author: Stephen King
Length: 327 pgs.

((I picked this book up for less than $2 on Goodwill books.))

I'll be honest, I never really understood the big deal about Stephen King. I've only read one of his books (Joyland) which was more coming of age with a bit of a ghost story than horror. Of course I saw The Shining like everyone else but I never read the actual book so that doesn't count. And I never was interested in reading this book or starting this series - every review I saw said that this book is boring, moves slow, etc. And it didn't seem like the typical King "horror" I keep hearing about-and it isn't. But it is a worthwhile book.

Then one day I started watching the movie The Dark Tower with my husband. We didn't finish it because I have four kids and can't last past 11 p.m. (it takes me like 2-3 days to finish a movie usually) but what I saw made me really interested in the story. So when I was browsing Goodwill online for some books and saw this listed for a super low price I figured what the hell. I'll try it.

So, the first part of the book - about 1/3 of it - moves pretty slow. I can see how people might call it "boring" if you don't hang in there for the rest of the story. What kept me going was the prose. This being only my second Stephen King book, it's a lot more intricately written than Joyland, which is told from the POV of a male teenager. Our main character here, Roland the gunslinger, has a deeper way of viewing and recounting things, and I found myself re-reading certain lines because there would be different layers to a single sentence. I guess that's King's talent which I can certainly appreciate more now having read this book.

We're introduced to Roland, who is moving through a seemingly endless desert trying to find The Man In Black, but we're not sure WHY or WHO the Man in Black is. And as I said, at first it's kind of slow. But I can pinpoint the exact chilling moment when it picked up the pace for me, and from then on it was pretty quick moving. We see glimpses of Roland's past: his parents, his childhood, his road to becoming a gunslinger. We don't quite understand his pursuit yet, but at least we become more invested in learning about it.

Last night when I sat down to read a bit more, I was on page 175. A few hours later I had finished the 327 page book. I never read 100+ pages in one sitting - I just don't have time for it. But from where I began reading last night, things only got more exciting and fast paced, and when I realized I only had 20 pages left I knew I would finish it.

The conversation with The Man In Black - the last chapter of the book - was the most exciting part for me. Inter-dimensional travel, multiple worlds, countless universes on top of one another but completely out of reach-all those things pique my interest like nothing else, because the possibilities are endless. So naturally when we finally learn who The Man In Black is and what The Dark Tower actually stands for, it is truly fascinating.

Four stars for the last 2/3 of the book and the climax, and for making me a Stephen King fan!